The present invention relates to the field of educational devices that use rewards to motivate learning.
Reward systems have long been employed to motivate learning. The everyday approvals and disapprovals of teachers, for example, provide both incentives for good performance and disincentives for poor performance, that is, both positive and negative reinforcement. Whether in the form of grades, passed or failed classes, or simply success or failure to learn, these rewards and punishments, incentives and disincentives, positive and negative reinforcements are the essence of every system of instruction. Many different types of reward systems have been used. Some teachers and teaching systems, for example, award points for accomplishments, with the points being redeemable for prizes.
Away from school, however, the approvals and disapprovals of teachers to be faced another day are frequently insufficient to motivate students to spend enough time on their studies. The more tangible rewards offered by teachers or parents are also often ineffective. Homework is frequently neglected in favor of recreation, including video games and television. The appeal of electronic devices offering instant gratification often overwhelms the perceived reward potential of a parent""s or a teacher""s future approval, better grades, or mastery of a subject.
Electronic educational devices, both stand-alone devices and teaching programs operating on a general purpose computer, have proliferated since the advent of low-cost integrated circuits. While such devices have the potential to educate, students often lack the motivation to use them. Some electronic systems have attempted to motivate leaning by providing rewards
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,035,625 to Munson discloses a teaching method and system in which educational information is presented during a computer game. The teaching program interrupts the game and displays a question selected from a tutorial module. The user""s responses to the questions are tabulated, and, upon correct responses to a predetermined number of questions, the user is rewarded by the scoring algorithm for the game being modified to permit the user to achieve higher scores.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,743,746 to Ho discloses a computer-aided educational system providing a reward determined by a milestone setter, a performance analyzer, a reward determinator, and a reward generator. Rewards, in the form of prizes selected by a parent or teacher, are generated as students pass the milestones set by a parent or teacher.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,009,603 to Fong discloses a system that employs a standard television receiver in an educational application intended to appeal to children. A microprocessor cooperates with a digital memory, a video generator, a sound generator, and a voice synthesizer to generate questions and related images on the television receiver. A child""s response is compared to the correct response stored in the digital memory and, if the response is correct, the pictorial representation associated with a particular question becomes animated to provide an indication of the correctness of the response and to motivate the child.
It is well known that learning is strongly motivated when it is to be rewarded by achievement of a highly valued goal. The need to communicate in a foreign land, for example, often leads to rapid acquisition of its language. A functionally illiterate adolescent may be motivated to learn to read by the powerful inducement of a driver""s license, with its written examination. It is also not unusual for young children, with the powerful attraction of television and videotapes, to master complex programming of video cassette recorders, programming sequences that may have baffled their parents. None of the aforementioned systems, however, employ this type of highly motivating reward, intending instead that learning be motivated by xe2x80x9crewardsxe2x80x9d provided within the system itself or by the attractive force of available prizes.
It is also well known that learning is strongly reinforced when the reward, as in the real-life examples just cited, is a direct and natural outcome of the application of the relevant knowledge. Again, none of the aforementioned systems are so structured; instead, they employ rewards only arbitrarily related to the educational exercises.
Electronic teaching systems are needed which make use of students"" own motivations to achieve real-life goals, and which provide educational exercises that lead directly and naturally to those goals.
It is an objective of the invention to provide teaching methods and apparatus that use rewards to motivate learning.
It is another object of the invention to provide such methods and apparatus in which the rewards are real-life goals of the learner.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide such methods and apparatus in which the rewards are functionally related to the educational exercise.
It is still another object of the invention to provide such methods and apparatus using a television channel selection device.
It is a further object of the invention to provide such methods and apparatus for teaching mathematical relationships and skills and facts associated with numbers.
It is a still further object to provide such methods and apparatus that use television as a reward to motivate learning.
In accordance with the invention, apparatus and methods are provided for teaching through the use of student-chosen rewards and educational exercises related to the chosen rewards.
Watching television is a popular activity. Children and adults are often highly motivated to see a particular show or to watch a particular channel. When a child forms an attachment to a particular television show or character from a show, for example, the child is often strongly motivated not to miss an episode. The present invention employs the desire to watch television as an incentive for learning and practicing academic skills.
The apparatus includes a channel selection device including input and output devices for communicating with a user. For example, the channel selection device may include keys or voice recognition circuits for the user to input information, and the output device may include a liquid crystal display, an array of light emitting diodes, or other visual or audio user-interface devices. The input and output devices may be located on a remote control device, on a set-top box, on the television itself, or elsewhere. The channel selection device performs all the functions of a standard television channel selection device, but further includes a unique instructional feature with regard to channel selection.
After the user enters a desired channel, the output device presents the user with a problem or question. This may take the form of a mathematical equation that involves the number of the selected channel, or a question from another subject area related to the number. If the user correctly answers the question, the output device so indicates, and the channel selection device causes the television set to switch to the selected channel. If the user supplies an incorrect answer, the television set will not switch to the desired channel. Thus, the user is motivated to answer the question correctly in order to be able to view his or her selected channel. The user has therefore selected his own reward, increasing motivation, and the reward, that is, the channel number, is integrated into the educational exercise, thereby providing strong reinforcement.
Many variations and enhancements can be made to the system to further facilitate learning. For example, if the user supplies an incorrect answer, the output device so indicates and may provide the user with another opportunity to answer the question. After a predetermined number of attempts, the correct answer may be indicated for the user to enter. This cycle continues until the user supplies the correct answer, with the output device preferably providing appropriate encouraging messages. The degree of difficulty of the presented questions can be automatically adapted to the user by increasing the difficulty as questions are answered correctly or decreasing the difficulty if too many questions are missed. When a question is susceptible to more than one connect answer, the user could be required to use different answers at different times.
Other objects and many of the attendant features of this invention will be more readily appreciated as the invention becomes better understood by reference to the following detailed descriptions and considered in connection with the accompanying drawings.